


Gods among us

by liobi



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, M/M, The Magicians Season 4 Ending Fix-It, godhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27399070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liobi/pseuds/liobi
Summary: In that moment it was all they could do to survive. So they found each other, they bound each other, and they survived as something new.Or; Quentin and the Monster's sister learn to get along.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater & Julia Wicker, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	Gods among us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Triss_Hawkeye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triss_Hawkeye/gifts).



“No! Give it to me!”

What a funny little man. 

Quentin had often wondered what his final thoughts would be, wondered if there would be some sort of sagely insight or epiphany. The thought in question however was quaint and spontaneous, reacting to the librarian that leapt towards him as he raised the bottle. Could he fix the mirror with his magic? It would almost certainly mean his death, but it would also mean they would accomplish their mission. He was so close to doing it but-

He saw Alice looking at him, the fear in her eyes that he was about to do something drastic. He remembered the eyes of Eliot, so happy to be back, to see him again. He remembered Julia, still in that hospital bed in a state of demi-godhood, slowly dying unless someone made an impossible choice for her. So Quentin made an impossible choice for himself. One that at least had a chance of survival. He raised the bottle to his lips.

It wasn’t like the time with Alice, when she burned like a star through his body and mind in her niffin state. This was like swallowing a whole galaxy. Everett was leaping towards him. He almost appeared in slow motion to Quentin, to the Thing that Quentin now housed. Everett’s physical form was so distorted, barely keeping itself together with all the raw magic that prepared him for his attempted ascent to godhood. They would need that power to survive.

So they broke him into a thousand tiny pieces.

-

Julia was standing next to Quentin when he woke up.

“Why?” Her voice was so much darker and angrier than Julia’s had ever been. It made his molars hurt.

“Oh good,” Quentin didn’t think he could have managed this if he had gotten Eliot’s monster, “it worked.”

The nurse in the hospital room looked at him as he spoke. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Coldwater.” She began checking his vitals. Quentin noticed that she was only using her physical tools, no spells. 

“What happened?” It was all so foggy but he began to remember, and panicked. “Where’s Alice? Penny?” 

“They’re fine, just resting in the waiting room.” The figure of Not-Julia paced in the corner, glaring at Quentin and the nurse. Quentin could feel her anger collecting in his throat, his fingernails, he felt himself giving into it. He wanted something to _hurt_. “With us having two patients now immune to all magical help, we needed as much room to work undisturbed as possible. You, luckily, seem like you’re on the mend.” 

“Two?”

“Julia Wicker.” Quentin was already halfway into the hall by the time the nurse said her last name, and the image of Not-Julia followed closely behind. The air was practically electric on his skin, and he was too focused that he had to see Julia to notice the spells that seemed to be failing around him, to see one particular student getting a minor wound healed suddenly to start sprouting an abundance of flesh that very quickly began to fill his room and spill out into the hall. Quentin could feel her now, the presence of Julia in the building weighed against his back like a stab wound. He wasn’t sure if that was from him, or his new roommate.

“Sir, you can’t be-” whatever the nurse was about to say quickly ended as Quentin firmly, but as gently as he could, picked up the man and put him on the other side of the door and shut it behind him. The differences were rather pronounced now that they were side-by-side.

In the bed was his dearest friend hanging somewhere between mortal and deity, between death and life. And next to her, eyes darker, hair messier, violence bleeding from the very air she appeared to breathe, was the Monster’s big sister. “What do you hope to gain from this?”

Quentin let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He stepped around Not-Julia and closer to his friend. He took her by the hand, felt the quickly blooming seed inside him react to the sapling within her. He could smell the gash in her back. It was raw, festering, a chasm between two inconsolable sides of a divide. “I didn’t want to gain anything.” Not-Julia stood over him. She was so angry Quentin was vaguely worried his blood would literally boil. “I just wanted to see the people I loved again.”

“You’ll see them alright.” Quentin swore he saw the glass begin to crack at her words. He was also uncomfortably realizing that Not-Julia’s voice had started taking on aspects of his own. “And if I ever get my way, I will make sure you never stop seeing the moment where you used your own hands to rip them limb to limb.”

“Why aren’t you making me do that then?” But his memories had already started to twine with hers. He was on an altar as little mortals surrounded him, preparing to ascend to godhood. She was on a bed, talking with a girl nearly identical to her about their Yale interviews as a party raged beyond the door. 

Not-Julia’s anger was his own now. “Because we are _bound,_ you horrible fool.” Ah. That was it. This wasn’t like the niffin, where he was just housing the container and it was badly leaking. They weren’t entirely separate beings any longer.

Everett had leapt at them. They weren’t sure what exactly he planned, but he was so stuffed full with magic that it may not have mattered if he connected with them. So instead they saw all the little, delicate places he was held together and undid them all. And then there was the tidal wave of magic that erupted from him. They were going to burn and drown and be reduced to nothingness all at once, and neither of them would survive. So instead they devoured that magic. Not enough to ascend and erase, but enough to lash, to weld.

Quentin tried to let the anger, horror, and disgust wash over him as smoothly as possible, he had a task to focus on after all, but he was finding it difficult. Alice’s niffin would have stormed and screamed until it was hard for him to think, but with _her_... It was with resignation and dread that they began to admit that there wasn’t a clear line where one’s feelings ended and the other’s began. So instead he put it aside and, acting purely on instinct and feeling the sapling of godhood within Julia, let himself go.

-

The light filtering through the unusually varied tree canopy was a soft yellow. Quentin found Julia in a large clearing, sitting casually in the large mossy hollow of what had once been a towering mountain ash. Her face broke into a grin when she saw him. “Hey stranger, come here often?”

“Oh, you know. Couple times a year. Get away from the husband and all.” Her eyebrows rose at this.

“A husband? My, how interesting, you must tell me more!” She laughed as she spoke, gods it was good to hear her laugh. “Take a seat, there’s plenty of room on my throne.” Julia motioned towards the empty space in her hollow and Quentin obliged himself. “It’s good to see you, Q.”

“You too, Jules.” 

“How are things,” Julia waved her hand in the vague direction of the sky “out there? I don’t know how long it’s been since-” she spotted her now. Not-Julia had come with Quentin, though he guessed that shouldn’t surprise him, and now stood at the edge of the clearing. Still incredibly, viciously angry, but also a little unsure. The real Julia’s voice went quiet, a little cold and scared. “Why is she here?”

“It’s… complicated. But she can’t do anything to hurt you. She’s stuck with me now.” Julia looked wary, but nodded. “I came to talk to you. For a reason.”

Julia stretched and lay back against the mossy walls of the hollow. “Does it have anything to do with why you look like a supernova?” 

This wasn’t the question Quentin was expecting. “What?”

She seemed surprised. “Q, you’re lit up like Times Square. And don’t even get me started on what you’re doing to the air quality.” They knew. They probably always knew it would be like this. But they wanted to be sure.

“Am I like you were? When magic was gone?” They really wanted the answer to be no.

“Probably, but i don’t remember radiating like a nuclear power plant.” Quentin’s face fell. He wasn’t sure how to read the expression he knew without looking that Not-Julia wore at the edge of the clearing. “But since I don’t think you came to ask for advice on your fledgling godhood… Why are you here, Q?”

“Funny you should mention godhood.” It probably wasn’t the smoothest way to bring up the topic, but Quentin could feel his anxiety coming on and it was as good a start as any. “How do you feel about yours?”

“Is this a pop quiz?” She laughed.

Quentin tried, and failed, to keep the notes of desperation from his voice. “Could you just answer the question, please?”

Julia went quiet. “It’s complicated. I hated it, I loved it, I was nervous but excited but then I gave it all up,” she looked out at the bright and vibrant forest, her eyes only briefly resting on Not-Julia. “There’s so much more out there Q. And I can't help but want to know it all.”

“Would you rather be a perfectly normal woman, no magic, nothing like that?” Julia went quiet, her mouth falling from the soft smile into a hard neutral line. “Or… do you want to give godhood another shot?” Quentin swallowed. 

“Technically there _is_ a third option, I could let myself die.” Quentin was somewhere between distressed and frustrated at Julia’s quip.

“If i’m not allowed to kill myself, heroically or otherwise, neither are you.” 

Julia relented. “Touché.”

“So…” Quentin swallowed. 

They sat together for what must have been hours there, on Julia’s throne. At first Quentin’s literal other half seemed mostly content to stay at the outskirts of the clearing, but as the hours crawled on she began to drift closer and closer to the pair. Maybe it was instinct, maybe it was a genuine feeling of curiosity. Regardless, by the time Julia spoke, Not-Julia had leaned against her tree and was watching the dappled yellow light move through the forest beyond. “She’s really a part of you now.”

They spoke at once, a short exhaled breath that could have been a chuckle, and then “Guess so.”

“Okay that was weird.”

Ordinarily Quentin would have probably agreed, but at this point more than just their emotions and memories had begun to merge. They were both still technically separate from each other, but Quentin could feel the bark against his back, he could see the leaves whose movement had briefly caught the attention of his other half, and knew that she could feel the moss under her hand, could see the back of her own head and messy hair. 

Maybe there would be a day where they were no longer two, but they both wished against that.

Julia stood and stretched, groaning all the while. “Okay, I’m going to do it.”

“It?”

“Come on Q, you’re a god now, use that power a little.” They felt it then, tucked inside her breast, not necessarily a prayer but definitely a sincere wish. 

“You want it back.” It was Not-Julia who spoke those words, and the original smirked.

“Q was my first true believer.” Julia hopped off the remnants of the tree. “I can’t just leave him alone after that.” 

“If you’re just doing this because of me-”

“I’m not.” Her eyes met his, not wavering in the slightest as she took his hand, helping him out of the hollow. “I want this for me. The fact that I’ll always have you is an incredible bonus though.”

“Okay. Okay! Okay so.” He looked at his angrier half, but she gave him a dismissive wave as she growled out “Mending is your thing, not mine.”

Ah. Maybe that’s why it had worked, their binding. They were opposites, he with his mending, and she with her destruction. They balanced each other out, crafting their own niche in the pantheon. Quentin thought about what he wanted to do, and heat traveled down his hand and into Julia’s, and he felt the sapling in her take root so deeply it would never again come out. It grew, and she grew brighter in his mind along with it until she burned like the sun in his awareness of her.

“Welcome back, our Lady of the tree.”

-

The hospital was in an uproar after that. People were rushing around like ants at the reawakening of a goddess. Quentin made his way as unnoticed as possible to the cafeteria. He probably didn’t need to eat, but it was pleasant, even She admitted it. On his arrival, he spotted a bowl of peaches.

Eliot.

He grabbed a few before heading towards where he inexplicably knew his love was. Eliot was still sleeping when he walked into the room.

“My brother was inside him for so long, it will likely take an age for him to recover.” She said. Her voice filled his skull but it wasn’t uncomfortable. “You may be able to coax him back sooner. His soul… could use some mending.”

So Quentin sat there for days, not really noticing the passage of time as doctors and orderlies, all incredibly skilled mages, puzzled over how to best help Eliot and why all of their spells and rituals went haywire near them.

They had noticed it by then. The supposedly endless rush of magic that constantly poured from every fiber of their being. This was their godhood, it was just a part of them now. Magic for mending and unmaking, magic for anyone in the world to use. They were everywhere now. 

It was the seventh day when Eliot opened his eyes. Quentin had peaches again.

“Hey Q.”

Quentin smiled. Even She didn’t have any animosity in this moment.

["Hey."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_WRGXD2agU)

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to finally pull this out of my WIPs and finish it because wow! Sure did hate the season 4 finale and how it fucked over everyone! I liked how the books ended with Quentin and Julia becoming gods together and hey there was a chance right here.
> 
> Some of the timeline has been moved around to make all this work, clearly, but I'm pretty happy with the finished product.


End file.
